Month: March 2014

I was just reading up on wrapping APIs and just came to another realization regarding Bitcoin. In a payment system using only Bitcoin, there is absolutely no need for PCI compliance. Zero. That’s right:

Bitcoin eliminates PCI compliance.

There’s no private data to store. No customer data exists that a criminal can then steal and rack up charges. Since Bitcoin payments are a push from the customer, instead of a pull from the merchant, there’s no need for any PCI compliance. Customer security is simply “baked in” to the protocol.

Think of how many millions (probably billions) of dollars are spent by large corporations every year, just to be PCI compliant. I know first-hand that the largest company in the world spends (at least) millions on PCI. There are yearly audits, infrastructure costs galore. All CC data must be encrypted. It’s a huge freaking hassle.

And forget about the small guys. There’s no way small businesses could ever hope to store CC data themselves (and be in compliance with PCI standards) — which is why they have to rely on companies like Stripe and Braintree to accept credit card payments.

I like Stripe and Braintree, but I like even more the fact that millions of dollars can be saved simply by using Bitcoin.

Things like this are what makes Bitcoin so amazing. This is just one example. Bitcoin takes everything we think we “know” about electronic payments and flips it on its head.